Delighted to announce that young midfielder Zach Simpson has won the Spartans Fans Player of the Season award, narrowly beating both Paddy Almond and Cyril Giraud to become one of the youngest ever winners of the award.
🥇 Simpson (32%)
🥈 Almond (28%)
🥉 Giraud (23%)
A bit of an unknown just over 12 months ago, Zach made his Spartans debut against Newcastle Benfield in the Northumberland Senior Cup, when a youthful Spartans side pushed an established Northern League team all the way – while Zach established himself as the club’s youngest ever goal scorer.
A few months later, when injuries began to take their toll only a few weeks into the new season, Zach and a number of players from the Tyne Metropolitan academy were forced to step up and fill in the gaps. From that moment onwards, the New Hartley Juniors prospect never looked back – establishing himself in the first team with some superb performances, goals and an outstanding work rate. Throughout the season, Zach has gone on to impress supporters both home and away on a consistent basis and is certainly a worthy winner of the award.
As a result of the voting, Zach also picks up the Young Player of the Season award.
Finally, Zach also snatches up the Green Army Player of the Season award. Originally an award designed to recognise a player who was a bit unsung or had battled through some adversity and had a superb season, it’s safe to say this year, we’ve had plenty of contenders for that award.
However, when you factor in that Zach wasn’t even playing much senior football when he was thrown into the deep end last August, came back in fine form after being dropped and then getting injured, all while continuing to develop throughout the season with constant managerial changes and chaos surrounded the club – it’s safe to say Zach has certainly battled through some share of adversity this season.
Congratulations, Zach!